Middle East - Anthony Ham [394]
Museum admission S£15
LONELY PLANET INDEX
Litre of petrol S£45
Litre of bottled water S£25
Bottle of Barada beer S£75 to S£100
Souvenir T-shirt (if you can find one) S£500
Shwarma sandwich S£30
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The only other environmental organisation of note in the country is the Syria Environment Association (Map; 011-4467 7800; www.sea-sy.org, in Arabic; sea-sy@scs-net.org; Beit Jumaa, Sharia al-Hamrawi, Old City, Damascus), which has an office in Damascus. This NGO has initiated a number of tree-planting programs and is heavily involved in trying to save Damascus’ Barada River. They also have an ‘ecological garden’ with a café (Click here) just outside Bab al-Farag in Damascus.
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DAMASCUS
011 / pop 4.6 million
Legend has it that on a journey from Mecca, the Prophet Mohammed cast his gaze upon Damascus but refused to enter the city because he wanted to enter paradise only once – when he died. In this city of legend, which vies for the title of the world’s oldest continually inhabited city, this is but one of thousands of stories.
Damascus (Ash-Sham to locals) is a place of storytellers and of souqs, home to an Old City whose architecture traces millennia of history and where the assault on the senses sustains the romantic notion of the Orient unlike anywhere else in the Middle East. The weight of history has, above all else, bequeathed one special gift to those who visit: its polyglot inhabitants – whether Muslim or Christian – have, down through the centuries, perfected the art of hospitality and nowhere is the oft-heard refrain ‘ahlan wa sahlan, you are welcome’, said with such warmth as it is in Damascus.
But this is not a city resting on its considerable laurels of historical significance – its conversion of countless elegant courtyard homes into restaurants and hotels and the vibrant life coursing through its streets has earned it a reputation as a dynamic cultural hub and even ‘the new Marrakesh’. In short, the Prophet Mohammed may just have been right.
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HISTORY
Excavations from the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque have yielded finds dating back to the 3rd millennium BC. The name Dimashqa appears in the Ebla archives and also on tablets found at Mari (2500 BC), while hieroglyphic tablets found in Egypt make reference to ‘Dimashqa’ as one of the cities conquered by the Egyptians in the 15th century BC. The early conquerors include the fabled King David of Israel, the Assyrians (732 BC), Nebuchadnezzar (around 600 BC), the Persians (530 BC), Alexander the Great (333 BC) and the Nabataeans (85 BC), before Syria became a Roman province in 64 BC.
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THINGS THEY SAID ABOUT…THE HISTORY OF DAMASCUS
‘…no recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence to receive news of it. Go back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus…She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies…To Damascus, years are only moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time, not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise, and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality.’
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1869
‘Some cities oust or smother their past. Damascus lives in hers.’
Colin Thubron, Mirror to Damascus, 1967
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With the coming of Islam, Damascus became an important centre as the seat of the Umayyad caliphate from 661 to 750. When the Abbasids moved the caliphate to Baghdad, Damascus was plundered once again. After the occupation of Damascus by the Seljuk Turks in 1076, the Crusaders tried to take the city. They made a second attempt in 1154 and a general of Kurdish origin, Nureddin (Nur ad-Din), came to the rescue, occupying Damascus himself and ushering in a brief golden era. A brief occupation by the Mongols was followed by the Mamluks of Egypt in 1260. During the Mamluk period, Damascene goods became famous worldwide and drew merchants from Europe.